to her. She wasn’t interested in anything which could even be loosely defined as a serious relationship, let alone a husband, and children … not on her radar at all. She’d always maintained that watching her parents thrash their way through an acrimonious divorce had been enough to put her off all of that for life.
No, it was always me who wanted those things, not Heather. And yet … look at us.
“Quite, and thank you for announcing that so loudly,” she says in an arch voice. “But what I mean is, feelings often come later. In real life, instant attraction is a very rare thing. In fact, I’m not so certain it exists at all.”
“Speak for yourself,” a voice behind us says. “Although it’s good to know how you really felt about me back then. Don’t spare my feelings, will you?”
Heather twists around to roll her eyes at her husband. “All right, so instant mutual attraction doesn’t exist. And you already knew how I felt about you back then. I made no secret of it.”
“Hello, Dominic,” I chime in.
“Hello, Clara.” He smiles thinly at me, dropping his squash bag onto the floor and heading towards the fridge. “And what brings you here this evening? Something to do with men, I should imagine, from the look on my wife’s face.”
I have a sinking suspicion that Dominic thinks I’m some sort of man-eater. God only knows what Heather tells him. Either way, I don’t think it helps endear me to him.
Dominic and I have an odd, uneasy sort of understanding. We’re pleasant enough to one another but, on the whole, we try to keep our contact time to a minimum. We’ve never really got on, not since those early days at university. I know that he thinks I’m immature, that I create unnecessary drama. And he …
Well, sometimes he looks at me and I’m convinced that he knows. He knows what I thought about him all those years ago, how I tried to persuade Heather to break up with him. How I said that he’d only hold her back.
Obviously, I was wrong. I mean, if they hadn’t stayed together, they would never have had Oscar. And now here they are and … well, clearly, it was the right choice. It should all be water under the bridge. But still, I can’t help but feel that Dominic resents me for it somehow.
“She has a new admirer,” Heather pipes up, eyes shining.
“He is not an admirer!” I sit up so hastily that I only narrowly avoid sloshing wine all over my lap. “Believe me, there’s nothing even remotely …”
“She kissed him!” Heather squeals. “And then he bowed to her!”
“That is totally out of context,” I splutter, snatching her empty wineglass from her hand. “How much have you had to drink today?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she says defiantly. “I haven’t been anywhere. Except to the half-term lunch, but that doesn’t count.”
Ah, so that explains it. You’d think that a midday gathering with fellow school gate mothers would be a refined affair. Not a bit of it. By the sounds of things, they’d put most illicit teenage house parties to shame in terms of alcohol consumption.
Dominic frowns faintly at her before turning his attention to me. “He actually bowed to you, did he? How … courtly of him.”
The last sentence is uttered with a barely repressed smirk, and I resist the impulse to narrow my eyes at him.
“Haven’t you got a squash game to get to?” I say sweetly.
It has the desired effect because he jumps to attention, grabbing an iced bottle of water from the fridge and slinging his sports bag over his shoulder.
“Oh, damn. Yes, and I’m already late.” He swoops down to drop a perfunctory kiss on the top of Heather’s head. “I’ll see you later. Oscar’s fast asleep; he went straight off. I doubt you’ll hear more out of him tonight.”
Heather just flaps a hand in a vague sort of farewell.
“Now we’ve got rid of him,” she says as the sound of the front door closing echoes through the house, “do you want some dinner? Only something simple, I’m afraid, as I thought it was just going to be me.”
“I’d probably better get back to Freddie,” I say reluctantly, getting up and taking our wineglasses over to the dishwasher. “Lord only knows what he and Casper will have got up to in the time I’ve been away. They’re both as bad as each other.”
“If you’re sure,” she begins, pulling items out of the fridge. Fresh pasta. A tub of pesto. Parmesan wrapped in paper from the Italian deli down the street. “Could you look in that cupboard for pine nuts? I think I bought some last week.”
I can only stare, mesmerised, as the ingredients stack up on the island in front of me. Proper food. I think of the congealed cold pizza waiting at home in the fridge and my stomach makes the decision for me.
“On second thoughts, maybe I will stay,” I say casually. I can’t let on to Heather how long it’s been since I last had anything that wasn’t reheated. She’d probably fall into a dead faint. “They can cope for an evening on their own. After all, Freddie’s a grown man.
Supposedly. And Casper …” Here, I find myself tailing off. What do I say about Casper?
Heather’s busily toasting pine nuts in a frying pan, but she turns to me with an amused look. “Is a grown cat? Supposedly?”
“Has had his fair share of trouble for one week,” I say firmly. “Believe me, he won’t go looking for any more. He was quiet this morning. I think last night shook him a little. He’s realised that he’s not as invincible as he thought he was.” A hopeful thought strikes me. “Perhaps he’ll turn over a new leaf.”
“Hmm …” Heather prods the pine nuts with a wooden spoon, not looking wholly convinced by my logic “… I’ll believe that when I see it.”
I wake with a start, jerking into an upright position in bed. Darkness envelops the room, broken only by a pale lilac light creeping beneath the curtains.
Momentarily disorientated, I fumble for the bedside lamp, relieved when its warm glow chases away the shadows, revealing the familiar outline of my bedroom. Everything looks as it should be, at least. Yesterday’s dress thrown over the back of the pink velvet chair, the cream painted wardrobe hulking in the corner, the door slightly ajar as always. I bought it at an antiques centre several years ago, and it’s never closed properly. My dressing table is littered with various paraphernalia: bottles of nail polish, lipsticks, a piece of amethyst given to me by my mother, its faceted crystals gleaming in the lamplight.
I sit there for a moment, the duvet drawn up under my chin for warmth, wondering what might have woken me. Normally I sleep fairly soundly. Unless I’m having a nightmare, and usually, if I’ve had one of those, I know all about it. I wake up cold, shaking, the remnants of the dream still clinging to the edges of my mind like cobwebs.
No, I’m pretty certain that I was sleeping quite peacefully. So what …?
And then I hear it. A deafening, screeching sound fills the air, followed by yowling. It sounds like it hails from the bowels of the earth itself, but I know better than that.
Fully awake now, I throw the covers aside, heart already in my mouth. As I clatter down the stairs, knotting my kimono at my waist, I keep telling myself that I’m overreacting. That of course it’s not Casper. That I’ll open the kitchen door and he’ll be safely there, all curled up in his …
All right, so he’s not in his basket. He’s not on the windowsill either. Or on the chair. He’s nowhere to be seen.
Really, who was I trying to kid? If there’s a fight